Chernobyl 1st expedition

"Imagine a city of 50,000 people. A city whose entire population in the course of one evening had to abandon their homes. Forever. Welcome to the City of Ghosts – Prypiat and Chernobyl.

"CATASTROPHE

"First a few words about Chernobyl and the catastrophe itself. On April 26th, 1986, the greatest catastrophe in the history of nuclear power took place. Overheating, partial rusting of the reactor and a hydrogen explosion occurred as a result of a failure of the cooling system. This caused radioactive materials from inside the reactor to be discharged directly into the atmosphere and area surrounding the plant. As a direct consequence of the catastrophe, 30 people died, over 200 became ill with post-radiation diseases and in a 30 km radius around the power plant, over 130,000 people were evacuated creating a closed protective zone. The indirect and long term effects of the incident are still unknown to this day.

"RADIATION

"These days, the level of radiation is not as high as at the moment of the explosion. It’s enough to just not stray from the asphalt roads, which are naturally less contaminated, and to not go where you’re not supposed to. However, you should also know that in the zone there are places where you only have to go a few hundred metres into to inadvertently receive a high dose of radiation. And so in the zone, I make a new friend- Geiger. The Geiger counter, to be exact. Without this it’s quite possible to end up somewhere you shouldn’t be. There are many unknown places in the zone where radioactive waste has been buried. It’s also worth knowing that grass and moss, which are abundant everywhere, are hundreds of times more radioactive than asphalt. Bringing the Geiger counter close to such moss causes it to freeze instantly. The counter is not capable of measuring such high radiation and simply jams. Thus it is worth avoiding strange looking and bright green moss and grass…

"And it is safest to have a Geiger counter with you and have it switched on the whole time."

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